


Castaways

by TAFKAB



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Blindness, Depression, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 11:24:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9547067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: While on an away mission, Spock and McCoy are buried in a massive avalanche.  Believing them dead, the Enterprise moves on... leaving a blind Dr. McCoy to deal with feeling like he's a burden on Spock.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dicklomatticimmunity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicklomatticimmunity/gifts).



> Thanks to Theanishimori for the helpful beta!
> 
> Originally published in Spiced Peaches XLVII.

Leonard hears the crunch of gravel under bootheels, a noise that always terrifies him. His fingers tighten around the handle of the wooden club that’s all he has to protect himself now that the phasers are drained. The mouth of the cave is a watery blur, a horizontal oval of light like textured privacy glass. He can see a vague shape blocking the light, but he can’t be sure. Spock always speaks up to let him—

“It is I,” Spock says softly.

Leonard lowers his arm; not that he could have brought himself to hit someone even back when his vision was 20/20. He’s worthless. Useless. A millstone around Spock’s neck. All he does is eat and drink, and Spock has to provide all the food and water for them both. Actually, if he had ever fired the phaser he probably _would_ have hit something—with his luck, he’d have hit _Spock._

Spock comes and presses the canteen into his hands. McCoy tries not to drink much, working to strike a balance between ‘less work for the poor bastard who’s stuck fetching the water’ and ‘not gonna get kidney stones or pass out from dehydration.’

“Thanks,” he says and passes it over.

“That was not enough.”

“I’m not very thirsty.”

Spock sighs and puts his hunting pouch into Leonard’s hands, filled with the spoils of his day’s foraging. McCoy feels and he can tell there’s a rodent inside, neatly and humanely killed in a snare, to provide for his inconvenient and morally reprehensible, yet substantial, daily human protein requirement. 

He takes himself out of the cave—he can manage that much, at least, by feeling along the wall—and off toward their makeshift latrine, where he skins the rodent by feel and puts the guts into the pit. He pegs the hide up on a tree branch; Spock has hollowed out a tree stump with fire and is making an effort to tan the hides of his catches for leather. He uses the brains from his kills and all the urine both men can make. On good days, that gives McCoy an excuse to drink more water. 

The body of the rodent grows slippery and cold in his hands; he takes it in and skewers it on a stick, ready to go over the fire to roast. He can turn the spit. It’s about all he’s good for.

Spock leads him out to wash his hands in the nearby stream; the smell of dead animal blood is offensive even to McCoy himself. They don’t speak for a while as he follows, both Spock’s hands on his shoulders. He presses lightly to direct Leonard on the safest path as they descend into the ravine.

“You would be able to see our path if you allowed me to meld with you.” Spock says it mildly; McCoy wonders why he bothers. They’ve been through this before.

McCoy huffs irritably. “I get dizzy seeing out of a head that’s not my own.” In truth he hates melding with Spock; there’s too much inside his head that he doesn’t want Spock to see. His increasing despair, for one thing. His bitterness for another. His guilt. His desire—that’s always been a source of mortification, any and every time he’s let Spock into his thoughts.

Spock is silent, guiding him slowly. The light is brighter outside but still formless. Leonard feels the caress of the breeze on his face; he can hear the never-ending hiss and boom of the nearby waterfall and the ripple of water in the stream below it. He thinks the place they’ve camped would be beautiful-- if he could see it. If they weren’t stranded. If they knew what had happened to the Enterprise. To Jim.

He gets down on his knees, wetting his trousers, and scrubs very carefully, as though he were about to go into surgery. If he doesn’t, the scent of blood lingers. He knows Spock doesn’t like it. 

“I need a bath,” Leonard says, gruff, and sniffs with dramatic exaggeration, wrinkling his nose as if he’s offended. “And so do you.”

Spock doesn’t demur. They strip out of the ragged remains of their clothing and Spock guides Leonard gently out into the river to a place where the water gathers in a deep pool below the falls. Leonard starts chanting his litany, guarding against telepathic contact. It’s a lot colder than it was a couple of months ago, and Leonard is shivering already. Only part of that shiver is due to the feeling of Spock’s eyes on him. Hell, that’s all his damn imagination. Spock’s nothing if he isn’t logical; he only looks at Leonard to ensure he’s healthy, to check and make sure he isn’t in danger of falling, maybe to tell him whether he’s got himself clean enough yet or not. To think anything else is just Leonard being stupid.

Of course _he_ doesn’t get to see Spock naked. But then again, he’s seen it all before. Just not here, not on a lonely planet as evening falls, not under the rainbow spray of a cascading waterfall. His imagination is healthy, if nothing else is. It helps him fill in all the requisite juicy details, like Spock’s hair plastered to his forehead, or droplets trickling down the mat of fur on his chest, or the gleam of wetness highlighting the curve of his ass. 

Leonard turns away as if he’s giving Spock privacy from prying eyes and scrubs until all he can smell is the vibrant, earthy smell of water.

Spock keeps a hand on him at all times; he can feel fingertips resting on the arch of his back, grounding him, letting him know he hasn’t been abandoned. Leonard’s got a strategy prepared, though: he makes a lot of trivial mental noise whenever Spock touches him. This time he recites the alphabet song in his mind, loudly, trusting in it to mask out his thoughts. Spock makes no comment.

When he’s done he stands up, trying to squeeze water out of his hair, then shakes his hands dry. The water is so cold that his fingers and toes have grown numb; his penis has retreated into his body like a box turtle into its shell. Spock helps him turn around, and McCoy’s hands settle on Spock’s shoulders as they climb out of the river, dress, and head toward the cave again. They make the transit at a shuffle before retreating into the relative warmth of their shelter. McCoy sits down by the fire and puts the skewered rodent over the flames, then begins to turn the spit. 

Spock tells him when the juices run clear; his mouth is watering and the meat is good despite the lack of seasoning. Spock always tries to provide protein for supper; earlier in the day, they had shared leaves and roots. They eat the occasional bit of fruit when Spock can find it, but the season’s growing late so there isn’t much of anything to be had. 

He thinks he can feel Spock’s eyes on him. He thinks that from time to time and never has a clue if he’s right. If Spock’s watching him now, he’s probably disgusted with McCoy’s carnivorous activities. 

“I wonder how long the winter cycle will be.” McCoy puts the remains of his meal in a small pile for later disposal. “It’s getting harder and harder for you to forage.” The hand phasers gave out after the first month. Their communicators will last considerably longer, since they don’t get any use.

Spock doesn’t answer for a time. “Perhaps we should have made an effort to migrate toward the equatorial region.”

“You know as well as I do that the terrain made that impossible.” Even if he hadn’t been blind, they’d have needed to fly across canyons and build boats to cross half a dozen wide, fast-moving rivers. From the Enterprise, they’d made the continent look variegated and beautiful. From here, they were just obstacles.

“We might migrate, regardless, to an area where I have not exhausted the local provender.”

And leave their warm cave, uncertain of where and how to find shelter. McCoy sighed. “Yeah, Spock, I think you should.”

Spock doesn’t miss the pronoun; he knows. McCoy can feel those Vulcan eyes resting on him, heavier than ever. They’ve had this argument before, too. 

Spock piles wood on the fire; McCoy hears the sound of the branches and sticks rattling together, of settling coals crackling. He feels the flare of new flame, radiant and warm on his face. This area is short of dead wood now, as well. Spock has to drag it from farther and farther away.

Spock comes around the fire and settles next to him on their makeshift bed. He slides an arm around McCoy, careful to respect his wishes and avoid touching bare skin while he sleeps. “Not without you, Leonard,” he says, as if that settles it. 

Spock is exhausted and soon sleeps. McCoy lies very still, wakeful, and can see the firelight waning against the inside of his eyelids.

The disaster replays over and over and over in his mind, the way it always does when he can’t sleep. He can’t see any way he could’ve prevented it or changed the outcome except beaming down to an entirely different locale, one that didn’t have the mineral they wanted. They’d been walking along the riverside, scanning for gadolinite, when a rumble stirred the ground under their feet and they’d looked up to find literally half a mountainside hurtling down from above. Scrambling for cover, Leonard had shoved Spock into a narrow crack and crushed himself into it right behind, barely managing to avoid the brunt of the landslide. 

The hillside in question contained large deposits of crystalline silicates. Leonard had made the mistake of glancing up one last time and had caught a faceful of almost microscopic silica shards that shredded his corneas more and more with every involuntary blink of his eyelids until the earth stopped shaking and Spock dragged him, scraped and bleeding, through the back of the narrow crack and deeper into the heart of the mountain, operating by touch until he finally found a pool where he could rinse Leonard’s eyes over and over and over until they got out all the tiny crystals they could, but it hadn’t been in time to save his vision. 

He could remember lying with his head in Spock’s lap, lacerated and bloody, his face wet, knowing that when and if the darkness lifted, he wouldn’t be able to see more than a vague blur of light. But he’d saved Spock, and that was what mattered most.

It had taken them nearly a week to find another way out of that pitch-black hellhole, and by that time the avalanche had settled, leaving no sign of the landing party. They still didn’t even know if Jim had survived-- only that nobody now remained in orbit to answer their hails. The thick, mineral-heavy mountain rock would have masked any sign of their survival. Investigating the original beamdown site, Spock soon discovered that the landslide had been far too large and too dangerous for the Enterprise crew to attempt the recovery of their bodies, which should have been crushed under hundreds and hundreds of meters of crystalline silicate rubble. 

Nobody aboard the Enterprise had any clue that they were still alive.

Now they live in the far end of the cave system, a much more stable area according to Spock’s tricorder-- at the very least, one where the slope of the mountainside is much gentler and occasional slides move slowly and are comparatively small. 

Leonard can self-diagnose, for what little that’s worth. His optic nerves aren’t damaged and a Federation medic in a modern facility could easily replace the damaged corneas with synthetic tissue, quickly restoring his eyesight to its full acuity… but the nearest one is dozens of unreachable light-years away. 

Leonard sighs and reaches, groping for more wood, laying another thick branch on the fire. 

“You are brooding.”

“Like a laying hen.” Leonard often tries to joke. He does whatever he can to spare Spock from his moodiness, his depression. 

“You are thinking of Jim.”

“Wouldn’t take a touch-telepath to figure that out.” Leonard shifts slightly away from Spock anyway. 

“The Federation will send a mining party to this world in search of gadolinite.”

“Not any time soon, not after that avalanche.” Spock must be reaching the ends of his own hope if he was bringing this tattered fragment of possibility up again. “They’ll go someplace safer to make a mine.”

“Tomorrow I will begin our preparations for migrating to a new area.” Spock’s hands move, testing Leonard’s ribs as if in hopes of finding reserves of fat there-- a futile hope; Leonard had always been as thin as his nickname would suggest, and now he’s much closer to a skeleton than he was before. “I will go down to the plain and attempt to kill a grazing beast so we can smoke the meat and tan the hide. Then you can tend the tanning vat while I make a sledge.”

“I can stir the thing, yeah.” McCoy sighs. “I’m good for that much. I can even provide brand-new piss for the cause.” It isn’t a very pleasant-smelling job, but he won’t complain. 

The shortening days drag on while Spock accomplishes his purpose-- and they have all the meat Leonard can eat, for once. They try to smoke what can’t be eaten. By the time the sledge is ready, Spock tells Leonard snow has begun to linger on the surrounding mountain peaks. 

He puts McCoy in front of him and settles his hands on Leonard’s temples so he’ll be able to see as they walk. Leonard doesn’t demur; he just tries to keep his thoughts shallow, running through his usual singsong chant of old lyrics, nursery rhymes, medical mnemonics, and doggerel-- anything he can think of to focus on that won’t give him away. The view is skewed a few inches to the left, where Spock’s head is positioned, gazing over his shoulder. That makes him stumble a little until he gets used to it.

Spock’s hands are warm and gentle.

They make it to the plains before Leonard, weak from lack of exercise and poor nutrition, has to stop and rest. Spock turns the sledge on its side to make a lean-to and makes a fire from the wood they brought. He and Leonard huddle under the smelly, badly-tanned fur of the herdbeast Spock had killed for its hide and shiver against the pervasive east wind as Leonard chews on a bit of smoked meat. They burn dried animal dung when the wood runs out. 

“A rapidly self-renewing fuel source,” Spock says, optimistic to the last. The buffalo chips, as Leonard calls them, give off a funny odor and collapse fast into piles of velvety ash. At least there aren’t any avalanches on the plains, and water is plentiful on this world, so they can travel parallel to the fringe of the forest without dying of thirst.

Spock works to adapt the sledge, cutting supple branches, bending them, and covering them with bark. They find the herdbeasts’ salt-lick and cure more hides-- and more meat-- with the precious mineral. Spock burrows into the bank of a gully and makes them a dugout to shelter in, building the front with wattle and daub and blocks of clay soil from the riverbank, a titanic labor that leaves him so ragged and muddy that Leonard can’t see any hint of blue to his shirt anymore even under the noonday sun, but when the first snows fly on the plains, they are warm. 

He’s always startled now when he touches Spock, expecting the perfect, pristine commander, but finding instead clothing stiff with dirt, a bristly beard, and a fringe of long, ragged hair. Spock has made himself what Leonard calls a dead animal hat, an awkward contraption with flaps that tie under his chin and cover his ears with thick fur. 

McCoy labors like hell in secret while Spock’s hunting and finally manages to cobble together a set of mittens for him, cutting the hides in a pattern formed by the shape of his own hand, hacking through the leather with a blunt flint knife, punching holes carefully in the edges with shattered bits of animal bone, and tying the holes tightly together with stitches of animal gut and sinew soaked in warm water. When it dries it shrinks, and the mittens are warm, at least, if rough and not very conducive to manual dexterity.

Spock accepts them and falls into a silence that leaves Leonard with a nervous, fluttering stomach, wishing he could see the Vulcan’s eyes. 

“Thank you, Leonard,” Spock says softly. “I am honored.”

“Least I could do,” Leonard says, and he means it-- this is a drop in the bucket compared to everything Spock’s done for him.

Spock curls around him that night, under their piles of animal fur, and holds him. Spock is stick-thin now, muscles hard but beginning to fade as his body draws from their mass to keep itself alive.

“You’re going to have to eat meat if you want to live. It’s about all we can get right now.” Leonard speaks into the night, the dim orange glow of the fire pulsing against his useless eyes.

“That is regrettably logical.” Spock’s hand stirs, sliding once along McCoy’s arm-- palm touching skin. McCoy lies very still and his mind flies to his litany, the only tattered shield he can erect against this tender, unexpected touch. It is eventually withdrawn, perhaps in a reluctant way. McCoy can’t tell.

By midwinter, even meat is scarce. Long blizzards wrack the plains and incursions of predator animals from the mountains make hunting dangerous. Spock stays in the dugout while the snows rage, crafting weapons. He helps Leonard cut and sew rough hide clothing for them both. They have to freeze-dry their hides now that weather forbids tanning them, and the method isn’t very satisfactory. 

Spock eats meat sparingly and with great distaste. Leonard knows it won’t keep him alive forever-- it won’t keep either of them alive indefinitely. He’ll get scurvy, and Spock will get some green-blooded equivalent, and that’ll be that. Or maybe the animals on this planet are missing some other critical nutrients so they’ll lose their lives to what the historians on Earth called “rabbit starvation,” better known as protein poisoning: dying with full bellies when their bodies give out, starved of vital nutrients and overloaded with excessive protein byproducts.

So he eats bitter leaves and gnaws on green sticks and frozen grass whenever Spock brings them in, and he doesn’t complain. 

Depression begins to grow anew as he squats in the dugout, deprived of light, hearing the bitter wind howling by overhead. Snow piles up so they have to beat a path to the stream several times daily. They have to break ice, then bring in chunks and melt them for water. At least Leonard can help with that, though Spock doesn’t much like for him to.

Leonard listens as Spock does domestic chores he can’t, and he wonders how long it will be before the inevitable end. When Spock pauses, he gets up and shuffles over. He sets a hand on Spock’s shoulder, needing the contact. The bone is sharp against his palm. Spock’s hand covers his; their fingers lace for a long moment before McCoy retreats.

Leonard wonders when Christmas came and went. He begins to think winter will last forever without a hope of spring. The herdbeasts vanish and the snow is too deep to find any more dung; they huddle in their dugout, hungry and cold, listening to the howling of wind and the snarling of the big predators who come down to the stream to drink. 

Leonard thinks that if he could see, he’d see steam rising from their breath. He tucks his face against Spock’s throat and brings Spock’s hands between their bodies to warm them. The mittens aren’t enough anymore, and the last time he went to the river to fetch ice, Spock came in with wet hands and a case of something that was very nearly frostbite. He has chilblains on his fingers and toes and even on his ears. He obeys when McCoy tells him not to scratch.

“We aren’t going to make it--” Leonard says without intending to speak, hearing the tremor in his voice, but Spock silences him.

Spock’s mouth is hot and his lips are gentle. Never mind that he tastes of salt meat or that neither of them have tasted toothpaste in seven months or that he only did this to keep McCoy from speaking a truth they both know. 

McCoy makes a low, startled sound and doesn’t know quite what to do. They lie pressed tightly together, unable to feel the contours of bodies through layers of leather and fur, but the cloud of their shared breath warms their faces and Spock kisses him over and over until they fall asleep. It doesn’t take long; they’re both weaker now.

When McCoy wakes, Spock is gone. He goes to the door and sets his fingertips against the ice-stiffened, layered hide panel that hangs there, reinforced with a latticework of branches and bones. A new blizzard is tuning up outside; Spock will probably be back any minute. ...If he’s coming back at all. He was hunting; maybe the predators got him this time. If he doesn’t come back, McCoy will die within the week.

Spock, though… Spock would live a lot longer and have less work to do if he didn’t have to support McCoy. That’s still true; they only managed to delay it for a while. A few pairs of mittens and some minor companionship don’t go very far in the face of this fight to survive, in the face of this depression, in the face of the humiliation Leonard feels from knowing Spock was forced to kiss him merely to comfort him. All McCoy can do is drag Spock down.

He could end it now and free Spock of the burden. The snow is already falling thickly outside. He could be irretrievably lost in half a dozen steps if he abandons the twisted hide rope Spock strung to guide him to the stream and back. He thinks of Lawrence Oates and the Terra Nova Expedition. “I’m just going out. I may be some time,” he says aloud to nobody. He’ll leave his hide coat and his hide hat and his own hide mittens for Spock to use. 

The world is a white blur and the wind cuts like a knife. Leonard can’t feel his fingers already. He heads left, away from the rope, and staggers as the bank vanishes, no longer supporting his groping hand. A few more steps, just a few more, and the snow will cover him before Spock can--

Something seizes him; yanking him around with such force that he thinks one of the big mountain bears-- they sound a lot like a bear, anyway-- has got him, but it’s Spock’s voice against the wind, a dismayed shout. His name. Leonard sags against him, defeated.

Spock hustles him back inside and pushes him down by the fire. “Stay here.” His voice is hoarse, thick with some emotion Leonard can’t identify. He vanishes, and when he returns, Leonard realizes he’s hauling a carcass with him; it’s so big he’s forced to wrestle it through the door. The smell is very different from a herdbeast-- this is a bear. He’s managed to kill one of the fucking things with a hand-held spear, dragging his trophy home like Leonard’s some kind of caveman’s wife. Spock hauls it through the door and dumps it unceremoniously in the corner. 

“What did you think you were doing, going outside as you are?” He tips Leonard’s face back, both palms on his cheeks, and his mind is there, aggressive against Leonard’s own. 

No singsong shield will stop the inevitable invasion this time. Spock delves into Leonard’s thoughts with near-brutal precision. In an instant he knows damn well what Leonard had intended, and Leonard can feel Spock’s anguish when he confirms his suspicion. 

“No,” Spock says, and he falls to his knees, bringing himself on a level with Leonard’s face. Leonard feels the warm brush of Spock’s breath beginning to melt the shell of cold that encapsulates him, feels Spock’s hands slide down to his shoulders, then his upper arms, dragging him forward.

The mouth that covers his is aggressive, hot, passionate. The tongue is sweet and wicked and insistent, sliding against his, and if not for the clumsiness Leonard would think this couldn’t possibly be Spock. But it is-- this is Spock’s long, angular face under his palms, Spock’s upswept brows under his thumbs, Spock’s elegant pointed ears under his fingertips. Spock’s mind surrounds his and fills him, pulsing with frantic concern, with fear, with desperate determination-- with something Leonard might even call love, if he weren’t such an unrepentant cynic.

It is as if a dam has broken and all the feeling it has restrained must now rush out, scouring away any token resistance in either of them. 

Spock pushes Leonard backward onto the furs and covers him, dragging the furs over them both to seal in warmth. “No,” Spock says against his lips, against his throat, against his earlobe and his collarbone, against his chest. “No, Leonard. You will not leave me here alone.” His hands are strong and they wander everywhere, as if trying to confirm that Leonard is real, is here, is warm and alive and moving, not lying in a snowdrift outside, blue and frozen.

Leonard’s arms curve around Spock’s back; he is helpless to do otherwise and embraces Spock in turn. Spock’s shirt comes off; his skin is cool where his clothes are thinnest. Spock pulls urgently at Leonard’s clothes, and soon they are both naked under the furs. Leonard’s eyes are open wide, sightless, struggling to see what he cannot; Spock’s eyes are closed tight, lids thin and soft when Leonard touches them, and Spock uses his hands to sense every inch of Leonard’s body as if _he_ were the one struck blind. 

They rut against one another, clumsy and undisciplined, bony hips unpleasant when friction grinds them together. Spock gasps and pants like he’s been running until he can’t run anymore; his breath is harsh and it hitches and sobs in his throat, the only sound he makes after he stops talking. 

McCoy remembers Sarpeidon; he would dwell on the memory if he had the leisure-- the only other time he had ever seen Spock lose it like this, though he wasn’t the one in Spock’s bed that time. But he can’t think of it, not yet, because Spock’s teeth are sharp and they leave delicate little bruises wherever they sink. They are hot under the furs, lovemaking burning away the last of the chill from McCoy’s limbs. Spock’s hands slide down along McCoy’s forearms and he laces their fingers together, capturing Leonard’s hands and pressing them up over his head. Their beards rasp together and Spock’s long hair tickles McCoy’s lips. 

When he comes, McCoy can no longer restrain a cry; he arches under Spock and his head tips back and he wails, abandoned, entirely unselfconscious. Spock is not far behind; slippery fluid jets from him onto Leonard’s belly and he opens his mouth in a silent gasp against McCoy’s throat, his body shuddering. His knobby spine and slatted ribs feel like heaven under McCoy’s hands. Like home.

“Do not go alone,” Spock whispers against McCoy’s throat. “Whenever we go, we go together.”

Leonard feels tears sting under his eyelids, and he nods. “Okay,” he says, absolutely inadequate, but he means it. For the space of this moment, it doesn’t matter whether Spock made love to him out of pity or because he really loves and desires Leonard. 

They lie tangled together and McCoy knows Spock can hear him thinking, but Spock doesn’t complain, doesn’t chide, doesn’t reproach. He lets McCoy be embarrassed and touched and shy and afraid; he does not condemn or mock. Instead he strokes McCoy gently-- his arms, his face, his hands, his flanks. McCoy touches him back, murmurs nonsensical little grumbles, and kisses him. He wonders who they have become now that the trappings of civilization have all been pared away; he wonders what Jim would make of this if he could know that it has happened. 

They lie together throughout much of the next week, getting up only to cook and eat meat from the frozen carcass at the far side of the room and to fetch water. As the days pass and their minds commune through touch, McCoy grows slowly to understand Spock, to know him in a way he never had. He shares himself, too: reluctant, tentative, yielding up his own secrets in halting, self-conscious stages, letting Spock feel his fear, his sorrow, his uncertainty… his longing (for many things, Spock not least among them).

He finally begins to understand that Spock is happy here somehow, the way he claimed to be on Omicron Ceti III, or as he was on Sarpeidon. Freed of expectation, freed of watching eyes, his existence simplified to pure physicality, to the successful fulfillment of daily struggles, to the warm presence of a willing, beloved body in his bed. It is a luxury Spock has never allowed himself to know.

Spock’s arms tighten around him at that and he nuzzles in snugly against McCoy’s neck, and McCoy realizes he’s exactly right, crazy as it sounds. Crazy as it is, the both of them wasting away, hovering a hop, skip, and a jump away from death’s door. Spock’s… maybe not what McCoy would think of as really happy, but he’s fulfilled. In a strange way, he’s content. 

McCoy’s death would shatter that; it would eliminate his primary reason for striving.

“I’m sorry,” Leonard breathes in Spock’s ear, nuzzling his lips softly against its perfect curve, humbled with the wonder of this intimacy, this shared feeling. “I didn’t understand.”

Many days pass before the blizzard passes. They stay curled under the furs together when Spock isn’t working; they make love when they have the energy. They just lie close-- sharing peaceful silent communion-- when they don’t. 

At last the blizzard blows itself away, leaving blue skies and bright light reflecting off the snow, so intense that it makes even Leonard squint when Spock takes him out to bask in the sunshine. Spock finds another herdbeast that day and brings it down with his spear. 

The snows start to melt at last; as the days wax longer and the sun breaks through the clouds, Leonard can hear trickling water when he lies awake during the night. The stream swells within its banks, rising nearly to their door, but Spock had calculated their position well, so it doesn’t flood the shelter. The roof of the dugout gets mushy, though, and Spock has to reinforce it to prevent a collapse. He’s able to travel to the forest to cut saplings for the job. Leonard braces his legs, holding him steady on their makeshift bone stepstool as he works to reinforce their shelter. Leonard moves their bed so it isn’t positioned under a drip.

Spock cuts his hand on a sharp stone one day, so Leonard cleans it by feel as much as by using Spock’s eyes, boiling water in a concave stone and washing the wound out with care. He hasn’t got any clean bandages to bind it up. Luckily it’s not deep enough to need stitching. He covers the wound with a new green leaf and wraps it with hide. He checks it again and again, tending it against infection until it closes and heals.

They don’t talk much, but there isn’t any sense that words are missing. They share all they need to when they lie skin to skin in their nest of fur together, smelling the musky tang of their dung fire and listening to the rush of meltwater outside. 

At last the first grass peeks through the snow and little blue flowers bloom atop long stalks. Spock describes them as five-pointed stars, which is how they look when Leonard looks through the Vulcan’s eyes, but when he’s alone in his own head, Leonard pictures purple crocuses instead, growing in clusters and poking their slender bloom stalks right up through the snow. 

The winter is over; soon the planet will put forth fruit. They have survived. 

“We will migrate southward to a more temperate locale and find a sheltered valley close to ample stores of wood and game. I will make stone tools. We will cultivate edible plants and animals. We will preserve food and gather wood.” Spock makes their plans as they walk out together, gathering dung exposed by the melting snow. “Our next winter will be easier.” 

Leonard smirks at him and Spock touches their fingers together, letting him feel warmth like a smile in return. He draws Leonard against him as the sun sets and the wind turns cool. Through Spock’s eyes Leonard sees stars begin to come out, distant and sharp; both of them feel wistful, a little melancholy. Both of them wonder whether Jim is alive out there and whether they’ll ever be found. They sit still and watch the sky until the warmth of huddled bodies isn’t enough, then retreat inside to lie down together.

When they finally leave the dugout to migrate southward, pulling their meager belongings behind them on the sledge, Leonard is oddly reluctant to leave the little shelter where they made a home together. He would look back, if he could, to say goodbye to the place where they first loved one another. 

Spock doesn’t want to look back because looking back is illogical. Why would he need to, when Leonard is at his side?

Leonard huffs a little to cover his embarrassment, but he accepts the compliment. 

They go forward hand in hand.


End file.
